


haven't you seen me sleepwalking?

by sleeplessmiles



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:44:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessmiles/pseuds/sleeplessmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was in free-fall.</p>
<p>All she wanted to know was when she’d stop, so that she could try to brace herself for impact.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>In the middle of the night, Fitz finds Jemma in the medical bay.</p>
<p>(Spoilers up to and including 2x05)</p>
            </blockquote>





	haven't you seen me sleepwalking?

**Author's Note:**

> Phew. This one was a killer. 
> 
> There are a few allusions to bruising and a few mentions of drugs, so be mindful if that's a thing you struggle with.
> 
> Otherwise, good luck!

When Jemma was a kid, her next-door neighbours had had one of those big trampolines – the type that would probably be deemed unfit for children nowadays, all wide expanses and gnarled exposed springs. Little Jemma Simmons had loved the days where her parents had to work late and she got to spend the afternoon at her neighbours’ house, because it meant unlimited trampoline time. There was always this moment, right when she’d reached the top of her bounce, where she’d feel like she was floating, before her stomach would lurch with the realisation of _oh_ God _where am I even going to land?_

Of course, Jemma understood the physics of it a lot better now (although she’d had a pretty decent grasp back then, too). Still, that reeling sensation at the top of the trampoline bounce remained the only way to adequately describe the feeling of plunging through the air, the far-off ground the only stopping point – a feeling she had become all too familiar with.

It was almost laughable now, really. From the virus jump to the pod drop, and now the quinjet leap, it was becoming something of an awful habit.

The only difference this time, though, was that she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was _still falling_.

It had absolutely nothing to do with her reception upon returning; everyone had welcomed her back into the fold, albeit a little hesitantly. Lance and Bobbi were easy enough to get along with when they weren’t sniping at each other. Mack spent a lot of time gazing at her thoughtfully, but she was already rather fond of him. Trip was his usual enigmatic self, and she found herself the recipient of Skye’s tentative smiles and always, _always_ of May’s watchful gaze.

And Fitz was… Fitz was a work-in-progress.

There was so much to tether herself to, back here. So much that should be holding her to the ground.

But no matter what she did, she could _not_ get her insides to comply. Her stomach still felt like she was plummeting through the air – reaching the top of that trampoline trajectory, terrified of where the gravity would pull her this time.

She was in free-fall.

All she wanted to know was when she’d stop, so that she could try to brace herself for impact.

 

\--

 

Leopold Fitz couldn’t sleep.

This wasn’t really a new phenomenon, in recent months. Whether the cause was pain, nightmares, a pesky hallucination (who was overly fond of reappearing just when he was most exhausted), or general agitation and restlessness, he hadn’t really been getting the sort of sleep that he knew he should have been getting.

It actually wasn’t the most terrible thing, all things considered. Some nights, he’d take advantage of the empty lab and fiddle around with some electronics, get his hands used to the simple functions again. It was much easier in the dead of the night, with no judging eyes tracking his every move.

Other times, he’d simply amble over to the med bay, find something to help him sleep.

He’d always hated medicated sleep, especially now – hated the way it slowed his brain, made him vulnerable, _useless_ – but on some nights, his distaste for it just wasn’t enough to warrant suffering through Jemma’s death over and over again, played out in a grotesque puppet show while he could only look on in horror.

(Needless to say, nightmares had been the number one sleep interrupter in the nights since Jemma’s return.)

On this particular night, he wasn’t sure how he was planning on dealing with the sleeplessness until his tired feet dragged him towards the med bay.

_Drugged oblivion it is_ , he thought tiredly.

He hadn’t anticipated a situation where he’d have company.

Certainly not _this_ company.

‘Jemma,’ he blurted stupidly from the doorway to the med bay, brain too sluggish to stop his mouth in time. He immediately regretted it as he watched her shoulders stiffen, saw her slowly turn to face him with a tremulous smile.

‘Hello, Fitz.’ Her lips battled to stay upturned, eventually giving in as the smile dropped from her lips.

He knew he was staring rather stupidly. He just _really_ wasn’t prepared for this.

(In his defense, she was staring right back.)

Belatedly, he noticed her general state of undress: leggings and a tight fitted tank top.

_Had she been working out? At 3am?_

Shit, what was he even interrupting? Could be anything. _Idiot._ He shook his head, averted his eyes.

‘I’ll – sorry, I can come back – ’

‘ – No!

He jerked his head back, surprised at the outburst.

‘I mean. You…’ she dropped her eyes. ‘You can stay. If you want to.’

Something about her wasn’t quite right – she seemed to have an added discomfort, more than the usual she’d been feeling around him since her return. It was enough to give him pause, to prompt him to regard her more closely.

(He knew where _his_ discomfort was stemming from; it had nothing to do with the company and everything to do with how the dimly lit medical bay looked an awful lot like a dimly lit medical pod.)

Then, it occurred to him.

Once, back before everything got… _real_ , his brain supplied, although he wasn’t sure that really captured it adequately.

Just. _Before_.

Once, _before,_ Skye had made a comment to him about Jemma’s size. Something really offhanded, not meaning to insult, or mock, or condemn. Just a general observation about how much smaller Jemma always seemed, despite her and Skye being around the same height. 

It still struck him, even now. Because that was a Skye who hadn’t witnessed Jemma Simmons in her element yet. Skye had seen Jemma tense with stress, making herself smaller as she deferred to authority. She’d seen her completely out of her depth in the field, trying desperately to get a handle on her situation.

What Skye hadn’t seen at that stage was Jemma Simmons striding into a lab, a classroom, completely self-assured and confident in her knowledge and abilities. She was an absolute force to be reckoned with, capable of rendering even the most treacherous of challenges into the simplest of tasks. 

Once you see Jemma like that, you can never really see her as anything else.

And he never had.

Until now.

Now, in the sterile stillness of the med bay, the faint humming of the few fluorescent lights she’d flicked on, she seemed dwarfed by it all. 

(She hadn’t looked this small in the tiny med pod – not to him. She’d seemed to fill the space, her undying optimism and admiration at the world colouring the very air they’d breathed. Her wonder was celestial, utterly unable to be contained by their underwater prison.)

He wouldn’t leave her here looking like this. He wasn’t capable of it, regardless of their current relationship.

Steeling himself, he slowly walked over to stand in front of her.

‘Had a spot of bother getting to sleep,’ she explained after a lengthy pause, voice pitched low as though she was loath to break the silence hanging around them. He could relate; the whole thing felt vaguely dreamlike.

‘There’s a bit of that going around,’ he murmured, watching curiously as she refused to meet his eyes.

That’s when he noticed the awkward way she was holding her arm against her left hip.

(And of course she noticed him noticing. Of course she did. That’s how they’ve always operated

There was little solace in that right now, he realised.)

Jemma rotated her body slightly, showing him the ice pack she was pressing to her side. He tried to tamp down the sudden flare of panic.

‘Can I…’ he began softly, gesturing at the ice pack. She handed it over wordlessly.

Reaching forward, he slowly rolled up her tank top slightly, exposing her hip. An angry red bruise had spread softly out from her hip bone, spidering outwards and marring her pale skin.

He winced, looking back up to meet her eyes. Her gaze was fixed on his face, eyes wide and solemn. With sure hands, she grabbed his wrist, guiding the icepack to press softly against her hip.

Fitz exhaled shakily.

_It’s that bloody story she keeps telling_ , he realised. _She jumped from a freaking building onto the quinjet. Of course she’s hurt, you idiot._

But she hadn’t shown even a hint of it. Still held herself with the same confident poise she adopted whenever she entered a lab. A queen entering her domain.

_She hadn’t shown any hint of it._

Her gaze didn’t shift from his face, apparently content to wait him out.

‘I didn’t realise you’d…’ _But he should have._ He tried again. ‘I would’ve…’

But what would he have done? What _could_ he have done? He wouldn’t have been any less mad at her for leaving. Maybe a little more worried, although that was hard to imagine.

Her lips quirked at that – and really, that’s all you could call the motion. A quirk. They barely made it halfway to a smile before dropping once more.

(And wasn’t that just the most worrying thing of all. Jemma could always muster a smile when she tried. She either tried and succeeded, or she didn’t try in the first place.)

Slowly, gently, she moved his hand away from her hip.

‘Shouldn’t you…’ he protested, trailing off at the look in her eyes.

She studied him a few moments longer; looking for what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been lying to Skye when he’d denied he and Jemma shared a psychic link. For all the times they connected, for all the times they operated on the same wavelength, there were just as many times where he’d look over at her and have no idea what was going on behind that incalculable gaze, spinning through that brilliant mind.

Now was one of those times.

Seeming to decide on something, she took a deep breath ( _shakily_ , he noted with ever-growing concern) before taking a measured step backwards, grabbing the hem of her tank top and pulling it slowly, inch by inch, up over her head.

Contrary to what he was _sure_ was popular belief, Fitz was no stranger to seeing Jemma Simmons wearing very little on her top half. The incident in second year with the contamination showers was clearly the standout, but not an isolated incident. From spur-of-the-moment swimming trips (God help him) to quickly taking off her shirt on the way to her bedroom to change, she’d never really had an issue with it. He’d always suspected she was testing out some mental hypothesis – something along the lines of ‘Fitz finds me physically and aesthetically pleasing, and also he’s too much of a sweetheart to say anything about it, but even _he_ must have a limit.’

(He’s not guessing at that, either. She’d told him once, pressed firmly into his side back in their Academy dorm, a particularly nasty bottle of red wine coursing through their veins as she babbled away happily. They never really talked about that again.

He was realising now that there was a lot they never really talked about again.)

To his immense relief, she’d always found something in his dumbfounded expression that seemed to please her.

So shirtless Jemma was not a new thing to him.

This, however, was another thing entirely.

He felt something like dread curl up in his stomach and settle in for the night as her shirt slowly revealed an enormous red patch over her ribcage on the left hand side. It wasn’t even – was it swollen? It seemed to ripple outwards from a couple of points of impact, spreading right up to underneath her navy blue bra.

Probably not working out then, he concluded (because now was not the time, but that was _definitely_ not a sports bra).

Just in here looking for something to ease the pain.

To offer some _relief_.

The same thing he was looking for.

He exhaled heavily, releasing all of his aching concern to join the tense sadness in the air between them.

‘Christ, Jem.’

She continued to regard him silently, eyes heavy and sad, brow slightly furrowed.

(He’d seen that sort of sadness in her eyes before, but never unaccompanied by tears. Jemma Simmons stared down her sadness better than anyone he’d ever met. She refused to let outward displays of it be her downfall.

But her eyes were not tear-filled. This was not a Jemma he knew how to comfort. This was not a Jemma he knew how to help.

He was in uncharted waters, right when she was looking at him like some sort of compass.)

Finally, she stepped closer: as close as she’d been before, then daring to take half a step closer. His hand, still holding the ice pack, hovered awkwardly between them. They were close enough that his every breath now blew softly at her hairline, disrupting little tendrils. But she didn’t look up, seeming to be fixated on his collarbone.

‘Three rib contusions, as far as I can tell.’

Fuck.

_Jemma._

That made more sense to him: the detached, clinical tone, the lack of eye contact. That was a Simmons coping mechanism with which he was familiar. If he could stay calm, ask her some measured questions, he might be able to glean some hint of her thoughts.

He felt his eyebrows shoot upwards anyway.

_Don’t say anything she needs you to not mention anything just shut up just let her –_

‘As far as – Jemma, you need to have someone check those properly.’

And he expected her indignant fury, he really did. A stubborn jut to her chin as she faced him down. An eyeroll, if he was lucky, to round off the repertoire.

He didn’t expect her to deflate even more.

‘I didn’t want…’ she murmured, sighing, before shaking her head.

There was sort of comfort in that; in him not being the only one struggling to find the words. Maybe they could communicate on the same level.

(He hated himself for even thinking it.)

Eventually, she raised her eyes to look at him.

‘I just wanted it to be _done_. If it’s all done with, good and proper, then I can just…’ Another heavy sigh, before she seemed to tense her jaw, steel herself.

_There she was_.

‘I did the x-rays myself. No breaks. Just the bruising.

She reached out again, then, guiding his hand to gently rest the ice pack against her ribs. Aside from a slight pursing of her lips, she didn’t react to the sudden cold whatsoever.

Not even a flinch.

(He’d seen May’s expression, whenever she’d come down to the lab in recent days. He’d noticed the concerned way she’d been regarding Jemma. It was only now that he was beginning to understand _why_.)

‘There isn’t really a treatment, for bruising,’ she continued quietly. ‘You just have to wait it out.’

He nodded, slowly, carefully. ‘No treatment’ was a familiar concept to him, but he knew it wasn’t one that sat well with Jemma.

Her brow was still furrowed.

(She still wasn’t showing even the vaguest hint of tears.)

They stood there in silence for a long stretch, simply staring at each other, each drinking the other in. There was something about it being the middle of the night, this painfully familiar setting, that made it less uncomfortable than it would have been in the harsh light of day. It seemed to exist outside of time itself.

After a while, she swallowed, dropping her eyes.

‘I don’t know how to make it stop,’ she admitted quietly.

Fitz felt his heart sink; aching at the inner pain mixed with the confusion of her tone, pain that had little to do with her bruised ribs.

Because he thought that maybe he understood it, now. Why she left him. She was folding in on herself, collapsing inwards like a dying star, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He couldn’t throw out an arm to catch her in her free-fall, help her brace for impact. He couldn’t give her the breath she needed. He could only look on, helpless. It was just like the nightmares that plagued him, taunted him.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do in that moment, he realised. If she told him to leave, if that’s what she needed, then he’d go. He’d stay away for as long as she needed – forever, if that’s what it took.

He understood it, now.

She’d seen it in him.

She’d just skipped ahead to the solution, in true Jemma fashion. Always delighting in beating him to the right answer.

And maybe he didn’t understand what it was that she was breathing into this quiet space between them, the quiet confession that floated there in this impossible moment – not specifically, anyway. But that hadn’t ever mattered before. They’d never full understood each other; all they’d really needed was to be in the vicinity. To be in each other’s orbit.

Fitz felt like he’d just been pulled back in.

So he sighed unsteadily, answering with the only truth he could offer her.

‘I don’t think you ever do,’ he confessed. Wild eyes looked back up to meet his, desperate. Needing to believe the solution, needing it to make sense. He swallowed, chose his next words carefully.

(Because _God_ , what he said next was so important. For all he’d struggled with words, both now and before, he needed to get these ones _right_. Whatever he uttered into this dreamlike space – to this Jemma, here and now – it was binding. It was real.)

‘I think you just… You have to learn to carry it.’

As soon as he croaked it out, he knew he’d gotten it right.

Her frown seemed to deepen as she absorbed it, turned it over in her mind. It was a strange sensation, having her gaze fixed on him and yet knowing her brain was a million miles away. Up close, it was utterly transfixing to watch it sparkle across those deep, fathomless eyes.

_Celestial, indeed._

‘I just feel like it hasn’t even happened yet,’ she finally breathed, sounding faintly distressed.

_God,_ didn’t he know it.

This answer came easily. It was all he’d ever known.

‘I’ll be here when it does.’

And he would be. He didn’t know what was plaguing her mind – although he’d readily take up arms to fight her demons, if she’d let him. He might not ever know, might not ever truly understand.

But he’d be there anyway.

She stared at him for what felt like hours, the faint humming of the lights the only soundtrack to this otherworldly moment. Then, ever so slowly, she inched forward, closing what little space was left between them and resting her forehead on his shoulder.

For all the times they’d offered each other a shoulder to cry on, this least resembled a hug out of any of them. It was also the most awkward one he could recall. He had to put the icepack down on the bench before slowly bringing his hand up to rest between her shoulder blades, anxious to avoid jostling her ribs. After a moment, she brought both hands up to his chest, fisting the loose fabric as though it was a lifeline.

It wasn’t some spectacular, tearful breakdown, because Jemma wouldn’t break. Not here, not now. She refused. This was just… taking some of the weight off. Ceding some of whatever she was carrying, passing it over to him.

Learning to carry it, without even really knowing what _it_ was, but knowing she could share the burden with him.

Fitz smoothed his hand over her shoulder blades.

‘I’ll be here,’ he promised again to the eerie space, chasing away the last vestiges of discomfort.

_I’ll be here for as long as you need me._  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
